Right
Concentration

Ajahn
Suwat Suvaco

Translated
from the Thai byThanissaro Bhikkhu

--o0o--

In general terms, Right Concentration means establishing the mind
rightly. On one level, this can apply to all the factors of the path. You
have to start out by setting the mind on Right View. In other words, you
use your discernment to gather together all the Dhamma you've heard. Then
when you set the mind on Right Resolve, that's also a way of establishing
it rightly. Then you set it on Right Speech, speaking only things that are
right. You set it on Right Action, examining your actions and then forcing
yourself, watching over yourself, to keep your actions firmly in line with
what's right. As for Right Livelihood, you set your mind on making your
livelihood exclusively in a right way. You're firm in not making a
livelihood in ways that are wrong, not acting in ways that are wrong, not
speaking in ways that are corrupt and wrong. You won't make any effort in
ways that go off the path, you won't be mindful in ways that lie outside
the path. You'll keep being mindful in ways that stay on the path. You
make this vow to yourself as a firm determination. This is one level of
establishing the mind rightly.

But
what I want to talk about today is Right Concentration in the area of
meditation: in other words, Right Meditation, both in the area of
tranquillity meditation and insight meditation. You use the techniques of
tranquillity meditation to bring the mind to stillness. When you make the
mind still, firm in skillful qualities, that's one aspect of Right
Concentration. If the mind isn't firmly established in skillful qualities,
it can't grow still. If unskillful qualities arise in the mind, it can't
settle down and enter concentration. This is why, when the Buddha
describes the mind entering concentration, he says, "Vivicceva
kamehi": Quite secluded from sensual preoccupations. The mind
isn't involved, doesn't incline itself toward sights that will give rise
to infatuation and desire. It doesn't incline itself toward sounds that it
likes, toward aromas, tastes, or tactile sensations for which it feels
infatuation through the power of desire. At the same time, it doesn't
incline itself toward desire for those things. Before the mind can settle
into concentration, it has to let go of these five types of
preoccupations. This is called vivicceva kamehi, quite secluded
from sensual preoccupations.

Vivicca akusalehi dhammehi: quite
secluded from the unskillful qualities called the five Hindrances. For
example, the first Hindrance: sensual desire. When you sit in meditation
and a defilement arises in the mind, when you think of something and feel
desire for an internal or an external form, when you get infatuated with
the things you've seen and known in the past, that's called sensual
desire.

Or
if you think of something that makes you dissatisfied to the point of
feeling ill will for certain people or objects: that's the Hindrance of
ill will. Things from the past that upset you suddenly arise again in the
present, barge their way in to obstruct the stillness of your mind. When
the mind gets upset in this way, that's an unskillful mental state that
forms an obstruction to concentration.

Or
sloth and torpor: a sense of laziness and inattentiveness when the mind
isn't intent on its work and so lets go out of laziness and carelessness.
It gets drowsy so that it can't be intent on its meditation. You sit here
thinking buddho, buddho, but instead of focusing the mind to get it
firmly established so that it can gain knowledge and understanding from
its buddho, you throw buddho away to go play with something
else. As awareness gets more refined, you get drowsy and fall asleep or
else let delusion overcome the mind. This is an unskillful mental state
called sloth and torpor.

Then
there's restlessness and anxiety, when mindfulness isn't keeping control
over things, and the mind follows its preoccupations as they shoot out to
things that you like and don't like. The normal state of people's minds is
that, when mindfulness isn't in charge, the mind can't sit still. It's
bound to keep thinking about 108 different sorts of things. So when you're
practicing concentration you have to exercise restraint, you have to be
careful that the mind doesn't get scattered about. You have to be mindful
of the present and alert to the present, too. When you try to keep buddho
in mind, you have to be alert at the same time to watch over your buddho.
Or if you're going to be mindful of the parts of the body -- like hair of
the head, hair of the body, nails, teeth, skin -- you should focus on only
one part at a time, making sure that you're both mindful and alert to your
mindfulness, to make sure you don't go being mindful of other things.
That's how you can cut off restlessness and anxiety.

As
you keep being mindful for of the same thing for a long time, the body
will gradually calm down and relax. The preoccupations of the mind will
calm down, too, so that the mind can grow still. It grows still because
you keep it under control. You weaken its unruliness -- as when you pull
fuel away from a burning fire. As you keep pulling away the fuel, the fire
gradually grows weaker and weaker. And what's the fuel for the mind's
unruliness? Forgetfulness. Inattentiveness. This inattentiveness is the
fuel both for restlessness and anxiety and for sloth and torpor. When you
keep mindfulness and alertness in charge, you cut away forgetfulness and
inattentiveness. As these forms of delusion are subdued, they lose their
power. They gradually disband, leaving nothing but awareness of buddho
or whatever your meditation object is. As you keep looking after your
meditation object firmly, without growing inattentive, restlessness will
disappear. Drowsiness will disappear. The mind will get firmly established
in Right Concentration.

This
is how you enter Right Concentration. You have to depend on both
mindfulness and alertness together. Right Concentration can't simply arise
on its own. It needs supporting factors. The first seven factors of the
path are the supporters for Right Concentration, or its requisites, the
things it needs to depend on. It needs Right View, Right Resolve, Right
Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, and Right
Mindfulness. As you keep developing the beginning factors of the path,
concentration becomes more and more refined, step by step. When the mind
is trained and suffused with these qualities, it's able to let go of
sensual preoccupations, able to let go of unskillful mental qualities. Vivicceva
kamehi vivicca akusalehi dhammehi. When it's secluded from sensual
preoccupations, secluded from unskillful qualities, it can enter
concentration. It experiences stillness, rapture, pleasure, singleness of
preoccupation. Both body and mind feel light.

In
the first stage, the mind isn't totally refined because it still has
directed thought and evaluation in the factors of its concentration. If
your mindfulness is in good shape and keeps its object in mind without
pulling away, if your effort is right and alertness keeps watching over
things, the coarser parts of your concentration will drop away and the
mind will grow more refined step by step. Directed thought and evaluation
-- the coarser parts -- will drop away because they can't follow into that
more refined stage. All that's left is rapture, pleasure, and singleness
of preoccupation. As you keep on meditating without let-up, things keep
growing more refined step by step. Rapture, which is coarser than
pleasure, will drop away, leaving the pleasure. Pleasure is coarser than
equanimity. As you keep contemplating while the mind grows more refined,
the pleasure will disappear, leaving just equanimity. As long as there's
still pleasure, equanimity can't arise. As long as the mind is still
feeding off pleasure, it's still with something coarse. But as you keep up
your persistent effort until you see that this pleasure still comes under
the Three Characteristics of inconstancy, stress, and not-self, that it's
part of the aggregate of feeling, the mind will let go of that coarser
aspect and settle down with equanimity. Even though equanimity, too, is
part of the feeling aggregate, it's a feeling refined enough to cleanse
the mind to the point where can give rise to knowledge of refined levels
of Dhamma.

When
the mind reaches this level, it's firm and unwavering because it's totally
neutral. It doesn't waver when the eye sees a form, the ear hears a sound,
the nose smells an aroma, the tongue tastes a flavor, the body feels a
tactile sensation, or an idea comes to the mind. None of these things can
make the mind waver when it's in the factors of jhana. It maintains a high
level of purity. This is Right Concentration.

We
should all develop tranquillity meditation, which can give temporary
respite from suffering and stress. But in a state like this, you simply
have mindfulness in charge. Discernment is still too weak to uproot the
most refined levels of defilement (kilesa) and latent tendencies (anusaya).
Thus, for our Right Concentration to be complete, we're taught not to
get carried away with the sense of pleasure it brings. When the mind has
been still for an appropriate amount of time, we should then apply the
mind to contemplating the five aggregates, for these aggregates are the
basis for insight meditation. You can't develop insight meditation outside
of the five aggregates -- the aggregates of form, feeling, perception,
thought-fabrications, and consciousness -- for these aggregates lie right
within us. They're right next to us, with us at all times.

So.
How do you develop the aggregate of form as a basis for insight
meditation? You have to see it clearly in line with its truth that form is
inconstant. This is how you begin. As you develop insight meditation, you
have to contemplate down to the details. What is form? Form covers hair of
the head, hair of the body, nails, teeth, skin, and all the four great
elements that we can touch and see. As for subsidiary forms, they can't be
seen with the eye, but they can be touched, and they depend on the four
great elements. For example, sound is a type of form, a type of subsidiary
form. Aromas, flavors, tactile sensations are subsidiary forms that depend
on the four great elements. The sensory powers of the eye, ear, nose,
tongue, and body are subsidiary forms -- they're physical events, not
mental events, you know. Then there are masculinity and femininity, which
fashion the body to be male or female, and create differences in male and
female voices, manners, and other characteristics. Then there's the heart,
and then viņņati-rupa, which allows for the body to move, for
speech to be spoken.

So
the Buddha taught that we should contemplate form in all its aspects so as
to gain the insight that will enable us to withdraw all our clinging
assumptions that say that they're us or ours. How does this happen? When
we contemplate, we'll see that yam kiņci rupam
atitanagata-paccuppannam: all form -- past, future, or present;
internal or external; blatant or subtle; common or sublime; far or near --
is inconstant, stressful, and not-self. It all lies under the Three
Characteristics. When we remember this, that's called pariyatti-dhamma,
the Dhamma of study. When we actually take things apart and contemplate
them one by one to the point where we gain true knowledge and vision,
that's called the practice of insight meditation, the discernment that
arises in line with the way things really are.

This
is a short explanation of insight meditation, focused just on the
aggregate of form. As for feeling -- the pleasures, pains, and feelings of
neither pleasure nor pain within us -- once we've truly seen form, we'll
see that the same things apply to feeling. It's inconstant. When it's
inconstant, it'll have to make us undergo suffering and stress because of
that inconstancy. We'll be piling suffering on top of suffering. Actually,
there's no reason why the mind should suffer from these things, but we
still manage to make ourselves suffer because of them. Even though they're
not-self, there's suffering because we don't know. There's inconstancy
because we don't know. Unless we develop insight meditation to see clearly
and know truly, we won't be able to destroy the subtle, latent tendency of
ignorance, the latent tendency of becoming, the latent tendency of
sensuality within ourselves.

But
if we're able to develop insight meditation to the point where we see form
clearly in terms of the Three Characteristics of inconstancy, stress, and
not-self, then disenchantment will arise. When the latent tendencies of
ignorance and becoming are destroyed, the latent tendency of sensuality
will have no place to stand. There's nothing it can fabricate, for there's
no delusion. When ignorance disbands, fabrications disband. When
fabrications disband, all the suffering that depends on fabrication will
have to disband as well.

This
is why we should practice meditation in line with the factors of the noble
eightfold path as set down by the Buddha. To condense it even further,
there are three trainings: virtue, concentration, and discernment. Virtue
-- exercising restraint over our words and deeds -- is part of the path.
Tranquillity meditation and insight meditation come under concentration.
So virtue, concentration, and discernment cover the path. Or if you want
to condense things even further, there are physical phenomena and mental
phenomena -- i.e., the body and mind. When we correctly understand the
characteristics of the body, we'll see into the ways the body and mind are
interrelated. Then we'll be able to separate them out. We'll see what's
not-self and what isn't not-self. Things in and of themselves aren't
not-self, for they each have an in-and-of-themselves. It's not the case
that there's nothing there at all. If there were nothing there at all, how
would there be contact? Think about it. Take the fire element: who could
destroy it? Even though it's not-self, it's got an in-and-of-itself. The
same holds true with the other elements. In other words, these things
still exist, simply that there's no more clinging.

So
I ask that you understand this and then put it correctly into practice so
as to meet with happiness and progress.

That's
enough explanation for now. Keep on meditating until the time is up.